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Corynne McSherry

Corynne McSherry is the Legal Director at EFF, specializing in intellectual property, open access, and free speech issues. Her favorite cases involve defending online fair use, political expression, and the public domain against the assault of copyright maximalists. As a litigator, she has represented Professor Lawrence Lessig, Public.Resource.Org, the Yes Men, and a dancing baby, among others, and one of her first cases at EFF was In re Sony BMG CD Technologies Litigation (aka the "rootkit" case). Her policy work includes leading EFF’s effort to fix copyright (including the successful effort to shut down the Stop Online Privacy Act, or SOPA), promote net neutrality, and promote best practices for online expression. In 2014, she testified before Congress about problems with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Corynne comments regularly on digital rights issues and has been quoted in a variety of outlets, including NPR, CBS News, Fox News, the New York Times, Billboard, the Wall Street Journal, and Rolling Stone. Prior to joining EFF, Corynne was a civil litigator at the law firm of Bingham McCutchen, LLP. Corynne has a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz, a Ph.D from the University of California at San Diego, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. While in law school, Corynne published Who Owns Academic Work?: Battling for Control of Intellectual Property (Harvard University Press, 2001).

One year ago today, a federal appellate court struck down a set of rules, crafted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), that were supposed to protect the open internet. That ruling, ironically enough and only after a huge effort from Internet users, may have finally set the FCC on the path toward new, better, and legally sustainable neutrality rules. To stay

A panel of eleven Ninth Circuit federal judges heard oral arguments yesterday in Garcia v. Google, a copyright case arising from the notorious "Innocence of Muslims" video that was associated with violent protests around the world.

We at EFF think remix art is an important part of modern culture, one that helps ordinary people critique mass media and create new art that builds on media they love. This week we teamed up with the Organization for Transformative Works to help make sure remix continues to thrive.

Back in May the Federal Communications Commission proposed flawed “net neutrality” rules that would effectively bless the creation of Internet “slow lanes.” After months of netroots protests the FCC is now reportedly considering a new “hybrid” proposal. EFF is deeply concerned, however, that this "compromise" risks too much, for too little.

The open access movement has historically focused on access to scholarly research, and understandably so. The knowledge commons should be shared with and used by the public, especially when the public helped create it.